My Self-Esteem a Mess Is Refrain for Spain’s Unemployed

Pablo Vega, who studied labor law and human resources at the Complutense University of Madrid, has never had a permanent job and envies former classmates that do. Photographer: Angel Navarrete/Bloomberg

June 7 (Bloomberg) -- Four years ago, Wendy Atkinson
Navarro, 36, had a job, a husband and a home. Now, she is
divorced, out of work and living with her mother near Madrid, a
casualty of Spain’s recession that has driven unemployment above
24 percent and is unnerving young people.

“My self-esteem is a mess,” Atkinson said. “My nephew is
15 years old, and the only difference between him and me is I
have kids. That’s how I feel.”

More than 4 million Spaniards are jobless in a double-dip
recession that is hitting young people hardest. More than half
of 15-to-24 year-olds are unemployed, and 37 percent of those 25
to 34 live with their parents. Rather than starting families and
building careers, many young people spend their days playing
video games and watching television. As their skills stagnate,
they risk falling behind permanently, said Katherine Newman, a
sociologist and dean at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

“For the rest of their lives, they’re damaged,” said
Newman, who has written about labor and families in Spain.
“They don’t recover occupationally, their earnings are
depressed for 20 years, they don’t marry at the same rate.”

Joblessness, combined with the destruction of household
savings, “tears the social fabric apart,” she said.

Pepe de Uriarte, 32, an unemployed publicist in Madrid,
spends his days looking for jobs online, preparing gazpacho,
playing golf and watching television. He has memorized the
afternoon broadcast schedule and calls himself “president of
the TV watchers’ club.” If he doesn’t find another job before
his 1,000 euro-a-month ($1,200) unemployment insurance runs out,
he said he may end up moving in with his parents.

‘Peter Pan’

Like many young Spaniards, de Uriarte has never had a
permanent job, instead signing temporary contracts that have
ranged from two days to 10 months.

“I am still a little bit like Peter Pan, because I can’t
plan,” he said. “I stopped my life when I was 25 years old. I
can’t set up a family, I can’t buy a house, I can’t do
anything.”

Spain’s system of temporary job contracts is at the root of
its record unemployment, which is more than double the average
of the 27 countries in the European Union, said Juan Dolado, an
economics professor at the Carlos III University in Madrid.

Temporary contracts were created in the 1980s as a way for
employers to avoid signing workers to permanent, full-time
agreements, which required 45 days of severance pay for every
year worked. Because temporary employees received only eight
days’ severance, companies preferred workers on short-term
contracts and, by 2007, they made up 33 percent of the Spanish
workforce, Dolado said.

Temporary Jobs

More than half of Spaniards who lost jobs had temporary
contracts, and most of them were under 40, Dolado said. Labor
law reforms passed in February reduce the mandatory severance to
33 days for permanent contracts and, over time, will increase
the required severance pay for temporary contracts, he said.

By making it easier to fire workers, employers will
eventually be more inclined to hire them, Dolado said.

Pablo Vega Gonzalez, 28, has been unemployed since March,
when his temporary job as a video-game tester for Electronic
Arts Inc. wasn’t renewed. Since then, he traveled to Dusseldorf,
Germany, to interview at Ubisoft Blue Byte, another video-game
company, and was one of more than 200 people who applied for 20
cashier positions at a new supermarket. He was rejected by both
employers.

‘Very Frustrating’

Vega, who studied labor law and human resources at the
Complutense University of Madrid, has never had a permanent job
and envies former classmates that do.

“They are my friends, and I wish them well but you wonder
why they have a job and I don’t,” said Vega, who lives at home
with his two brothers and mother, a widowed pharmacist who cooks
for them. Vega said he contributes to the household expenses
when he can.

While most of his friends are living at home, “it’s very
frustrating,” he said. “If you meet a girl, you hope she has a
job and a flat. It’s difficult.”

The crisis in youth unemployment was exacerbated by the
collapse of Spain’s once booming construction industry, which
lured young people out of school for wages of 2,500 euros a
month, said Fernando Fernandez, an economist at IE Business
School in Madrid. Now, they’re back with their families, waiting
in vain for another job that will pay that well, he said.

High Expectations

“They expect to get a job that is comparable and there is
no way,” he said. “There’s a problem with expectations. You
cannot expect to have no education and get those wages.”

Spain’s unemployed risk being permanently tainted in the
eyes of employers if they are jobless for years, said Newman at
Johns Hopkins.

“Their skills get outmoded, their qualifications are weak
and they look really aberrant to employers,” Newman said.

More than 70,000 Spaniards took to the streets May 12-13 in
protest of joblessness and cuts to social programs. The march
was on the anniversary of a 2011 occupation of Madrid’s Puerta
del Sol, the central downtown square, that lasted for weeks.
People are angry that the government is slashing spending on
education and health care while Bankia SA, the lender Spain
nationalized on May 9, is asking for a 19 billion-euro bailout,
de Uriarte said.

“Banks and politicians made us think the economy was very
solid, but it was all based on housing and construction,” he
said. “We thought we were much more rich and powerful than we
were.”

Spain’s Economy

Spain’s economy is forecast to shrink this year and
unemployment will continue to rise as the government cuts
spending and banks tighten credit, the European Commission said
May 30.

The country, the fourth-largest economy in the 17-nation
euro area, is struggling to cut its deficit and rescue a
financial system crippled with bad debt. Its banks are holding
184 billion euros worth of “problematic” loans and assets,
according to the Bank of Spain, or 60 percent of all commercial
Spanish real-estate debt.

Atkinson, whose father is English, has lived all her life
in Spain. She was fired in 2010 from her job at LaSexta, a
television station where she worked as an administrative
assistant. She went back to school to become a nursery school
teacher, got divorced and, with her two children, moved in with
her mother, stepfather, brother and brother’s girlfriend in
April after her unemployment benefits ran out.

Selling Car

Atkinson has failed to find a part-time job and is planning
on selling her station wagon. Her mother has supplied her with a
credit card for expenses and gives her instruction on how the
household runs.

“Now we have discussions about how to set the
dishwasher,” Atkinson said. “My son said, ‘You’re not in
charge, your mother is in charge.’ It hurts.”

Her brother is planning on moving to Helsinki to open a
Spanish wine store with his Finnish girlfriend, and Atkinson
worries that her children will also one day leave Spain for
better opportunities

“I don’t want my kids to go away,” she said. “But I
don’t know how the future is going to be.”